


The House with the Red Shield

by Kainosite



Category: The Letter for the King Series - Tonke Dragt
Genre: Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, Bathing, Captivity, Corruption - Raping Someone to Convert to Side, First Time, Intimacy - Falsely Gentle Threatening Touches, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Scenario - Winner of Game or Bet Gets to Rape Loser as a Reward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:28:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/pseuds/Kainosite
Summary: Tiuri staked his life on the outcome of a chess game.  Had he known what that would mean, he might have made a different wager.
Relationships: Viridian/Tiuri
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	The House with the Red Shield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> With gratitude to my beta J, who deserves to be knighted.
> 
> Content note: I doubt the Kingdom of Dagonaut has a formal age of consent, and Tiuri is socially an adult, more or less, although people frequently comment on how young he is to be filling that role. But he’s seventeen.

“Checkmate,” said the King of Eviellan.

Tiuri stared at the chessboard. He had seen the end coming for several moves now – the king had forced him to sacrifice his queen, and then his bishops and his remaining castle had closed in on Tiuri’s king. But the finality of it still came as a shock.

He had staked his life on this game, and he had lost.

It hadn’t seemed like a mad gamble at the time. Tiuri knew himself to be a good player, an equal match for the king. He had won their first game. Last night he had seen his death in the king’s expressionless face and seized on the only thing he could think of that might hold the man’s interest and stave off his execution until tonight, the third night, when he and the Fool had planned to make their escape. Tiuri had been so sure that good would triumph over evil, that God, or fate, or justice – _something_ – would guide his hand.

His plan had almost worked. At the beginning of the evening the King of Eviellan had been preoccupied, and Tiuri had easily been able to counter his moves. For a while it even seemed like the king might lose interest entirely and leave the room, leaving Tiuri and the Fool free to break the bars on the window and escape their prison. But then the king’s focus had sharpened, and he had neatly maneuvered Tiuri into a trap, the trap that had cost him his life.

Tiuri swallowed hard.

“Will you kill me now?” he asked.

He did not want to die, but a swift execution would be better than that other fate the king had spoken of, to be locked away forever in some dark dungeon with nothing but the endless drip of water on stone to keep him company. Surely there were such places beneath the ruined castle. Perhaps Sir Ristridin was imprisoned in one even now. The memory of the king’s words made Tiuri shudder. His strange air as he’d described that crypt, the softness of his voice, emotionless and unreadable with his face hidden behind the visor of his helmet – yes, Tiuri was sure he was describing a place he had seen, if only in his dreams.

Did the King of Eviellan suffer from nightmares? Did he fear for his soul when he was alone in the dark? Did he worry that his evil deeds would catch up with him and he would end his days locked away in a lightless cell? But then the king’s most cheerful daydreams were nightmares too, Tiuri reminded himself sharply. It was foolish to feel pity for a man who was planning to murder him and then bring war and ruin upon the Kingdom of Unauwen, all because he could not have it for himself.

“I will not kill you at all,” the king said.

The words should have been reassuring, but Tiuri looked into the king’s dark eyes and felt a chill creep over him. In the Wild Wood there was a pool of black, still water surrounded by ancient trees, a pool so dark it seemed to have no bottom. The Fool had warned him not to drink there because the pool belonged to the forest spirits. Tiuri had heeded the warning and ridden away from the place as quickly as he could. A sense of cold malice had filled that secret grove, the same feeling he got now looking into the king’s eyes.

The King of Eviellan smiled, but it was a cold smile. 

“That would be a waste of my winnings, don’t you think? War demands sacrifices, but a good leader never throws away the lives of his men for nothing. Not when he can put them to better use.”

 _The lives of his men?_ But Tiuri was imprisoned, disarmed, entirely at the king’s mercy. The king would not have to sacrifice anything to kill him. He had sworn off all notions of chivalry, he’d said – it was impossible to believe that he would give Tiuri back his sword and shield and allow him to defend himself in fair combat, as he had against Jaro. That duel had been nothing more than a game for the King of Eviellan. Now they were playing a different game, and Tiuri had lost.

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you? You chose to stake your life. It is your life that I have won, not your death. It is mine to dispose of as I wish, and I do not wish to end it. Not tonight. For however long you may live, you belong to me.”

“That is not what we agreed!” Tiuri cried.

The king laughed. “When I asked you to stake the black horse, did you expect me to kill him if I won the game? Of course not. Ardanwen was beautiful, and I wished to possess him for myself, to ride him, to make use of him as I saw fit. It is just the same with you. You staked yourself, and so you are mine now, to do with what I will. You must keep your bargain, sir knight, or forfeit your honor.”

He was right, Tiuri realized. He should have known that the chess game was a trap. Why else would the King of Eviellan have agreed to play? If he truly stood to gain nothing, he could have killed Tiuri on the spot, instead of drawing out his fate these three nights. He had wanted to turn Tiuri to his side from the beginning. When he saw that he could not win his loyalty with words, he found another way to claim him. Indeed, was it not the king who first told Tiuri the story of the chess game played with a life as the stake? Tiuri had thought himself very clever coming up with this plan to buy himself some time, but it had not been his plan at all, he realized bitterly. The king had planted the idea in his head. Tiuri had done exactly what he wanted.

He glanced into the other room, where the Fool was huddled on the bed in a miserable ball, his knees drawn up under his chin. Marius had warned him. _You must not speak to him. He is evil! He is playing with you and he wants you to lose!_ In his strange, simple way he had seen what Tiuri could not. The King of Eviellan was a more dangerous enemy on this little checkered battlefield than he was on a real one, for in playing with him Tiuri had bargained away what the king could never have taken by force. They had filed through the iron bars in the window, but now Tiuri was trapped by a bond that was stronger than iron: his honor as a knight. That was a bond he could not break.

But what else could he have done? They knew too much of the Road of Ambuscade and the secret army gathering in the wood. The king would have killed them both to guarantee their silence. Perhaps in this way Tiuri could keep them alive long enough to help the Fool escape, or to send a secret message to warn King Unauwen of the danger to his realm.

“I am at your service, sire,” he said, bowing his head.

“Good. I trust you remember something else I told you: that anyone who will not submit when he has lost must die. I am pleased that I do not have to kill you, Sir Tiuri. I am pleased that you have chosen to submit.”

If the king was pleased, Tiuri thought he probably shouldn’t be. But he was still alive, and so was Marius, and for now that would have to be enough. They might yet find a way to spoil Eviellan’s wicked plans. The king smiled mockingly.

“I said there would be no white shield in my retinue when I crossed the mountains, but perhaps you will carry another color. Perhaps I will make you one of my Red Riders.”

“No. I staked my life, not my honor,” Tiuri said slowly. His turbulent thoughts were beginning to settle, and as he saw more clearly the course that he must take, some of his courage was returning to him. “I will serve you however you wish, if you will give me honest work. Set me to cleaning weapons or felling timber, order me to dig ditches or wait on your men at table. No task is too lowly. But I will not do evil deeds or harm my friends. You can execute me for my disobedience if that's what you want, but you cannot force me to act against my conscience.”

For an instant that terrifying mask of anger descended on the king’s face, but then his features smoothed again, and when he spoke his voice was calm.

“And who are you, a stripling boy, to judge between good and evil, or what is best for your friends? Had you agreed to stake your horse on our first game, he would still be alive.”

Tiuri knew the king was only baiting him. He had won that first game, but it wouldn’t have mattered; the king still coveted the magnificent black horse for himself, and he would never have let Ardanwen go. The Red Riders would have tried to ride him in any case, and Ardanwen would have fought them off and broken free only to be hunted down and killed. Everything would have happened just as it did. All the same, the reminder of his beloved horse’s death brought tears to Tiuri’s eyes, and he had to duck his head for a moment to hide them.

“Still, you are right about one thing: I cannot force you to fight if you do not want to. We will have to find some other use for you.” The King of Eviellan looked him over speculatively, and then smiled at Tiuri as if they shared a secret joke. “Come. You will attend me tonight.”

Tiuri looked over at the Fool, who was still sitting on the bed, his eyes wide with fear. “But– my squire,” he protested.

“Your peculiar squire is still my prisoner. Perhaps I will win his life from you on another night, but for now he will remain here.” The king laughed disdainfully. “Don’t worry, he isn’t going anywhere.”

 _You might be surprised!_ thought Tiuri. But looking at the Fool curled up in his wretched ball, too frightened even to protest at the king taking away his friend, Tiuri didn’t really think he would have the nerve to escape on his own. And would Jaro help him even if he did? Jaro had lent them his aid because he owed Tiuri his life. He did not seem like the sort of person who would help a stranger, or who would have much patience for the Fool’s muddled explanations.

But Tiuri could hardly tell the king _I can’t come with you because my friend and I were planning to escape tonight._

Glumly, Tiuri followed the King of Eviellan down the spiral staircase and through the many corridors of the Tarnburg until they came to the wooden door that led into the House with the Red Shield. They came back into the great hall with the long tables where the Red Riders had been sitting when Tiuri was first taken captive. Now they were at dinner; there were baskets of bread and pitchers of ale on the tables, and the green-liveried servants were walking around with platters of roast meat. The hall was filled with raucous laughter and the boasts and arguments of the men. It might have been the hall of any castle where knights were gathered, but for one thing: there was no high table, no raised dais at the end where the lord might dine with his family and honored guests.

Perhaps it only meant that the Black Knight sat and ate among his men as an equal. But Tiuri thought this was not what it meant.

Although the hall had no dais, it did have a door in the back that opened onto the lord’s private apartments. The king led Tiuri up a flight of stairs to a door with a pair of guards stationed outside it. Inside, Tiuri found a large room with a fire blazing merrily in the hearth and a plush red carpet on the floor. A table covered in maps and papers stood by the window, and the far corner was occupied by a large canopied bed. The walls were unplastered wood without even a tapestry to adorn them, but it was certainly far more comfortable than the cold, dirty rooms where Tiuri and the Fool had been imprisoned.

The king saw him looking around the bedchamber.

“It is a rough place, my woodland fortress. But one day perhaps I will host you in a palace: the palace of the City of Unauwen.” The king clapped his hands, and one of the men in green appeared in the doorway. “Bring my dinner, and a bath for our guest.”

He sat down at the table, and a servant soon came back with soft white bread, a roast duck and a bottle of wine. It was much finer fare than the coarse rye loaves that had been given to Tiuri and Marius or to the men downstairs, and the king’s meal was served to him on silver plates, his wine in a goblet of sparkling crystal. Tiuri’s mouth watered at the smell, but the king didn’t offer him anything to eat. Despite his hunger, Tiuri took some satisfaction in seeing his earlier guess confirmed: there was no high table in the hall because the king ate alone in his rooms, disdaining the company of his men. And small wonder, for who could the King of Eviellan invite to join him at his table? The only “guests” who might visit him in the Wild Wood were doomed prisoners, and as for his family, he had made war upon his father and brother and vowed to conquer their kingdom.

Two more servants came in carrying a wooden tub between them, and others followed with ewers of steaming water. There was even a linen cloth to line the tub to protect the bather from splinters. Tiuri searched their faces, but they were all strangers; he could not see Jaro among them. Jaro had been demoted from his old place among the Red Riders, but he was still one of the king’s men-at-arms. He probably had more important duties than filling a bath. Or perhaps he was busy preparing their escape, unaware that Tiuri had been taken from the tower.

“Go on,” said the king, nodding towards the tub. Tiuri thought of the poor Fool, all alone in their chilly rooms in the Tarnburg with nothing to make a fire. No one had offered Marius a bath. It seemed unfair to take advantage of a luxury his friend was denied. But the warm water did look very inviting after a week of wandering through the woods and sleeping outdoors, and two days of being shut up in a dilapidated room in a ruined castle.

Besides, it seemed unwise to refuse the king’s hospitality. If he wanted to play at being friendly again – well, that was certainly better than that implacable mood he had been in last night, when the pitiless hostility in his eyes had driven Tiuri to stake his life on a chess game. He would just have to keep reminding himself that the king’s kindness was all a ploy and not to be trusted, since the Fool was not here to do it for him.

Tiuri turned away from the table to undress, but he could feel the king’s dark, assessing gaze on him as he stripped off his clothes. Back at Castle Ristridin, he’d felt like those eyes saw right through him. Even in Prince Iridian’s kind face, they had been disconcerting. Tiuri had no great secrets to hide, but it was still unsettling to feel as though all his thoughts had been laid bare. Now, knowing the malice behind the king’s scrutiny and without even the meager protection of his clothes to shield him, the feeling was much worse, as if the King of Eviellan was slowly peeling off his skin. It sent a shiver down Tiuri’s spine, and he quickly hopped into the bath, as much to put another barrier between himself and the king’s eyes as to get himself clean.

“Take his clothes,” the king said to one of the servants. Tiuri whirled around in dismay, so quickly that some of the water splashed onto the floorboards. The king gave him a mocking smile.

“You won’t be needing them,” he said.

Of course, he was Eviellan’s man now. The king would want to clothe him in his own livery, not the blue and gold of Tehuri. Perhaps Tiuri would be given a green tunic and a black cap to wear, like Jaro and the other servants. It would be easier to escape if he could walk around unnoticed – but no, that would be of no use to him now. He couldn’t run away. He had pledged himself to the king.

Tiuri let the servant pick up his clothes without protest, although his heart fell to see his own things being taken away.

“And bring me some oil,” the King of Eviellan added, as the servant left the room.

 _Oil? For the bath?_ Tiuri had heard in songs of people in distant lands being bathed with fragrant oils, but in the Kingdom of Dagonaut people only used soap. There was a ball of it beside the bath, laid out on a fluffy towel. Tiuri scrubbed all the dirt of his many days of travel off his body, even ducking his head under the water to wash his hair. It was so nice to be clean! And the warm water eased his stiff muscles, tense from his high-stakes chess game and so many days spent in wariness and fear. He never quite forgot that the king was watching him, but that worry too seemed to be washed away by the soothing water.

So it was a terrible shock when the king’s voice came from just behind his left ear.

“Your flesh is so smooth and unmarred,” he said.

Tiuri startled and dropped the soap with a splash. The King of Eviellan was sitting on the rim of the tub with a hand braced on the far side, leaning over him alarmingly. How had he moved so silently in his heavy armor, without Tiuri even noticing that he’d risen from the table? He must have walked over while Tiuri’s head was underwater, just to surprise him. It was the kind of mean trick Tiuri should have expected from him.

Tiuri had to go fishing for the lost soap between his legs, which saved him from having to answer the king. He was annoyed about being startled and he was not sure he could be polite.

“Save for this scar, here,” the king went on, tracing delicately along Tiuri’s left arm with a fingertip. “How did you come by it?”

Tiuri clasped the old wound protectively and edged over to the far side of the tub.

“Your Red Riders,” he said sullenly. “When they attacked me beside the Blue River.”

“Ah, of course. Your great quest, in which you earned your white shield.”

There was a knock at the door. One of the green-clad servants had returned with a little vial of oil, and the king stood up to take it from him. Tiuri took the opportunity to get out of the bath, which had lost most of its charms now that the king had come over to interfere with it. He toweled himself dry and then wrapped the towel around his shoulders like a cloak, for he still had nothing to wear.

More servants came to empty and take away the bath, but they did not bring him any clothes. As the last of them were leaving, the king came over to Tiuri and pulled the towel away from him. Tiuri was so shocked that he let it slip from his fingers without resistance.

“This too,” said the king, and handed it off to one of the servants.

“But I have nothing to wear!” Tiuri protested.

“I told you, you won’t be needing any clothes,” the king said, amused by his discomfort.

The fire had chased away the chill of the spring evening, but the room was still too cold to go without clothing. But Tiuri didn’t see what he could do about it. There was an ornately carved chest at the foot of the bed that might contain the king’s spare clothes, but he couldn’t go rooting around through his new master’s possessions for something to wear.

The king pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down facing Tiuri.

“Come and help me off with my armor. You can hang it over there,” he said, gesturing towards a wooden rail that ran along the wall beside the bed. His gauntlets were dangling from it already, and his plumed helmet and red shield sat on a bench below the railing.

Tiuri began unbuckling the straps that held the plates together. He had performed this task many times for his father at Castle Tehuri, and later for Sir Fantumar. He had even done it for his true king, King Dagonaut. But he had never done it naked! As he lifted a spaulder off the king’s shoulder he was very conscious of how hard and sharp the black metal was against his bare skin, of how soft and vulnerable his naked flesh seemed by contrast.

“Shall I oil it?” Tiuri asked, for the king had placed the vial of oil on the table.

“That won’t be necessary,” the king said, giving him another one of those smiles that seemed to suggest they shared a secret. Tiuri wished he knew what it was. “Just hang it up. But I am glad to see you take such good care with my armor. I should make you my squire.”

Tiuri was only trying to be helpful, but the king just saw it as another opportunity to bait him. Why was the King of Eviellan so spiteful? Not even his frustrated ambitions seemed enough to account for it. And Prince Iridian was so gentle and so wise! Tiuri wished he could have gambled his life away to a nicer person, but then, a nicer person wouldn’t have been playing for such a stake at all.

“I am already a knight, sire,” Tiuri reminded him, trying to keep a rein on his temper.

“But what use is a knight who will not fight to defend his king? No, Sir Tiuri, if you will not lift your sword in my service then you will not carry a sword at all. Perhaps you will reconsider when you have seen the alternative.”

If the alternative was waiting on the King of Eviellan naked, Tiuri could not say he liked it very much. Every time he had to step off the carpet onto the cold floorboards by the wall he started shivering, and he hated the feeling of the king’s eyes on him as he walked back and forth across the room, carefully carrying each piece of armor in turn. It felt like an obscure joke being told at his expense, all the crueler because he wasn’t sure why it was funny. He felt like the Fool, mocked and buffeted about by a world he could never understand.

But as strange and humiliating as it was, it was certainly much better than raising his sword against his friends. If the king wanted to bully Tiuri into fighting for him, he would have to do something worse than this. Tiuri thought again of that dark, dripping dungeon the king had spoken of, but surely if he wanted to throw Tiuri in there he would have done so already. And even if he did, Tiuri would never give in. He would rather die alone in the dark than hurt Piak or Sir Ristridin or the others.

His first trips across the room beneath the watchful eyes of the king had seemed to take forever, so Tiuri was surprised to find they had come to the final piece of armor, the king’s chainmail shirt. He slipped out of it and handed it to Tiuri to hang over the rail. When Tiuri turned back to the table, the king was unbuttoning his doublet. He stripped off his breeches and his red undershirt, and then Tiuri saw why he had remarked upon Tiuri’s unmarked skin.

The King of Eviellan’s own limbs were covered with the scars of old sword cuts, some white and faded, others still pink and new. The worst were on his legs, where neither his mail shirt nor his shield could protect him, but there were many on his arms as well. There was even a puckered furrow along his ribs, where a sword or a spear must have cut through his chainmail.

“Does it surprise you?” the king asked. “We cannot all have a kingdom handed to us on a golden plate. Eviellan was not pacified with gentle words. The knights of King Dagonaut were glad enough when those quarrelsome lords ceased to raid along your borders! But now you call me evil, I who bought your peace with my blood, and presume to judge the affairs of foreign lands.”

“Sir Edwinem was not killed in a foreign land,” Tiuri said quietly.

He knew it was a dangerous thing to say. It was his mention of the knight’s murder the night before that had led to their fateful chess game. But he could not forget the other blood the king had spilled. The King of Eviellan might claim to be a noble peacemaker, but when he rode out in the guise of the Black Knight he was no better than a brigand.

He braced himself for a torrent of bitter words, even a blow, but the king just smiled his cold smile.

“You are very sure of yourself, aren’t you? Cocksure, one might say. How upright you are, how noble, how bold! But it is the hardest steel that proves the most brittle. I wonder what it would take to make you shatter.” He went to the table and picked up the little vial of oil. “I suppose we shall see. Come to bed, Sir Tiuri.”

Tiuri blinked. Surely the king could not be suggesting..?

But he looked between the oil and the bed, and then back to the king’s face, and had a horrible sinking feeling that he was.

Since he’d come to the king’s chamber, Tiuri had not once thought of his modesty. Without his clothes he felt vulnerable, exposed to the cold and to the king’s piercing gaze, but this particular vulnerability had not occurred to him. Nudity before strangers was such an unremarkable feature of his life that he had not thought to read anything sexual into it. In the summer, King Dagonaut’s squires and all the pages and apprentices and young men of the capital bathed together in the Blue River without giving it a second thought. In the winter, they bathed in the palace kitchens so they wouldn’t have to carry the hot water too far to fill the tubs. Lords and ladies might have private baths in their bedchambers, but for the rest of the palace it was a communal affair. The servants would flirt and tease each other, and sometimes the kitchen maids would tease Tiuri, but the senior servants were there to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. No one had ever seriously propositioned him.

Then again, no one in the City of Dagonaut had made him parade back and forth in front of them without his clothes on for half an hour.

But the king had studied him during their chess matches too, when Tiuri was fully dressed. Prince Iridian had done the same. Tiuri had thought that was just what the twin princes were like: watchful, contemplative men who tried to gauge their opponents and carefully weighed each move before they made it. He hadn’t thought the king might be looking at him and seeing… that!

Tiuri flushed and belatedly cupped his hands to cover his privates.

“I told you I would do nothing dishonorable!” he protested.

“You said that you would not do evil deeds or harm your friends. But this harms no one, and if it is an evil it is only a very small one. You remember what must become of those who cannot submit.”

He did. And he remembered the Fool, still hostage in the tower. What would become of him if the king decided to kill Tiuri for refusing to obey his orders? Marius had stayed alive this long only because he was under Tiuri’s protection and it amused the king to play with Tiuri. Tiuri knew that even his submission could not guarantee his friend’s safety. The king might decide to kill the Fool anyway, or grow bored of toying with Tiuri and execute them both. But angering the king by his disobedience would surely increase their danger.

There were things that Tiuri would not, simply _could_ not do, even if it cost his life and the life of his friend. But was warming the king’s bed really one of them? It might not be honorable, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone else or endanger the Kingdom of Dagonaut or his friends in Unauwen. It wouldn’t break the oath Tiuri had sworn when he first became a knight, to raise his sword only in the service of good against evil and to use his shield to protect those weaker than himself.

That didn’t mean he was happy about it.

“But– I wouldn’t know what to do,” he said feebly. “I know how to look after armor, sire, but I know nothing about this.”

“This display of blushing innocence is charming, but I cannot believe that King Dagonaut lets his knights go out into the world so ignorant of the ways of men. Or are you a little boy, still, whose nursemaid covers his ears when the grown-ups speak of grown-up things?”

To his embarrassment, Tiuri blushed even harder. For the first time since he climbed out of the bath, he felt warm. More than warm: almost feverish. His cheeks felt hotter than the fire.

“I have heard of it,” he snapped, stung. “It’s just that I’ve never done it before.” He glared at the king and added spitefully, “I might not be very good at it.”

“That will be more trouble to you than to me,” the King of Eviellan said indifferently. He walked over to the bed and turned back the coverlet, gesturing for Tiuri to lie down.

Tiuri hesitated. It had made his skin crawl just to feel the king’s eyes on him. How much worse would it be to feel the king’s hands on him, touching him in his most private places? To be pierced not just by his gaze, but by his prick? He felt ill just thinking about it. But then he thought of the Fool, and of the warning he must somehow find a way to pass to King Unauwen. Too much depended on him for Tiuri to risk everything by refusing to comply with the king’s wishes.

Besides, he couldn’t just stand naked on the carpet all night while the king stared at him.

He took a deep breath and lay down on the bed.

At Tehuri and later at Castle Fantumar he had been the only squire, and under the watchful eyes of his parents and Sir Fantumar there had been no opportunity for sexual misadventures. Nor had Tiuri taken any interest in such things at that young age. Later, when he came to the capital to serve King Dagonaut, he was in the company of other boys of his own age for the first time, but he was the youngest in his cohort of squires, and the world of sex remained a foreign country to him.

He was not unaware of Jussipo slipping into Foldo’s bed in the dead of night in the big room that King Dagonaut’s squires all shared in the palace and all the thumping and giggling that followed, or of Wilmo’s dubious boasts of an assignation with a chambermaid. But Tiuri had regarded these adolescent fumblings with smug disdain. He had never taken much notice of the admonitions of priests, but he did pay attention to the tales of chivalry told by the minstrels and the older knights, and he knew a knight ought to reserve his romantic impulses for the beautiful and noble lady he fell in love with, winning her admiration with his honorable conduct and valiant deeds. Knights were hot-blooded young men and some degree of gallantry was expected of them, but having it off with other squires or servant girls fell well short of the ideal.

Tiuri had come to the King of Eviellan’s bedchamber entirely chaste. Until he kissed Isadoro in the garden at Islan, he had never even been kissed. 

Tiuri had imagined his first time only vaguely, but his hazy fantasies all involved beautiful girls who gazed up at him with adoration in their eyes, not a villainous king who wore the face of a friend. Perhaps Tiuri and this girl, who sometimes looked like Lavinia and sometimes like Isadoro and sometimes like the red-haired kitchen maid who used to tease him and tell him he had pretty eyes back when he was still a squire, would ride Ardanwen together through a field of flowers, and then Tiuri would take off his cloak and lay her down on it and… something would happen. Details became vague at this point. But they definitely did not involve being taken against his will in the King of Eviellan’s bed.

The king sat down beside him and cupped Tiuri’s cheek with his hand. His touch was gentle, and for a moment Tiuri almost wanted to lean into the caress, for no one had touched him so tenderly since he was a child. But he could not forget whose hand it was, or how he had come into the king’s bed. Perhaps it was the very hand that had slain Sir Edwinem.

“It need not hurt if you are not afraid,” the king said.

Tiuri realized he was trembling.

He was afraid. Nothing in all his knight’s training, or in his perilous journey to Unauwen the year before, had prepared him for this. A knight expected to face many dangers: he might be slain on the battlefield or shot down by a brigand’s arrow, he might have to go through fire and flood, or lose his way in the mountains or the forest. But to meekly lie down and endure such a violation – that was not the sort of deed the minstrels sang about. It demanded courage of a different kind, and Tiuri was not at all sure he had it. But he certainly was not going to admit that to the King of Eviellan.

“I am not afraid,” he said boldly, looking his enemy in the eye.

The king smiled as if he did not believe him. “Then kiss me,” he said.

Tiuri froze. He had kissed Isadoro, but he had wanted to kiss her. He’d almost felt like he couldn’t _stop_ himself from kissing her. This was different. He looked up at the king’s face, so like his brother’s. He had the same handsome, youthful features beneath the same mop of blond hair, the same dark, penetrating eyes, the same thoughtful, melancholy air. If only it was Prince Iridian who wanted a kiss, Tiuri wouldn’t mind so much. In fact, he might not mind it at all. But to kiss the King of Eviellan!

But he had overcome so many dangers – mountain blizzards, deadly spies, the Red Riders. How could he call himself a knight if he shrank away from a kiss? Tiuri screwed up his courage, leaned up on his elbows and kissed the king on the lips. He misjudged his distance and bumped their noses together, but the king took him by the chin and tilted Tiuri’s head until they were better aligned. Then his tongue plunged inside Tiuri’s mouth, flattening Tiuri’s own tongue against his teeth.

Isadoro had never done _that!_ Tiuri made a muffled noise and tried to pull away, but the king’s grip on his chin was too strong. He had to endure the strange sensation of something probing around in his mouth that didn’t belong there until the king chose to let him go.

Tiuri fell back against the pillow and gasped for breath.

The king gave him an ironic look. “That could be improved, perhaps. We’ll try it again later.”

Absurdly, Tiuri felt a flash of the same sense of shame he’d felt when he failed at one of his lessons in swordsmanship or chivalry.

Why should he want to please the king? If the kiss had been just as unpleasant for the king as it had been for Tiuri, it served him right. Maybe next time he should try kissing someone who wanted to kiss him back, instead of forcing a prisoner into his bed with threats and tricks. With a little luck he’d have such a rotten time he would never ask Tiuri to lie with him again, and Tiuri would be allowed to clean armor or muck out the stables or do just about anything else around the castle, so long as it wasn’t this.

“I did warn you I might not be very good,” he said. He was aiming for smug, but it came out sounding sulky even to his own ears. The king just laughed.

“For this next part you only have to lie down,” he reassured Tiuri, taking the stopper out of the vial of oil and using a little of it to wet his fingers. He set the vial down and lifted Tiuri’s right knee until his leg was bent almost double and his thigh was pressed against his chest.

“Hold it there,” he ordered, guiding Tiuri’s hand to the back of his knee, and then the king’s oil-slick fingers rubbed against the rim of Tiuri’s hole.

It felt very strange. No one had touched him there since he was old enough to wipe his own bottom. In a way it almost felt nice, but it was such an overwhelming sensation that it was more like pain. It didn’t actually hurt, but Tiuri didn’t know what to make of it. His eyes grew wide and he lay very still.

After he circled Tiuri’s hole a few times, the king pressed one of his fingers inside. That did not hurt either, but Tiuri squirmed anyway, as much as he could when he was holding one of his knees up by his shoulder. The king laughed again.

“You will have to take something much bigger than a finger,” he said. He pushed his finger deeper inside. “Relax and submit to me, and it will go better for you.”

Better for Tiuri sounded like it really meant “better for the king”. He was not sure he wanted to listen to that that advice, and even if he did he was not sure he could follow it. It felt wrong to have the king’s finger inside him. Something was going in where things were meant to go out, and Tiuri’s body didn’t know that he had lost it in a chess game and promised to let the king do what he liked with it. His insides kept clenching around the king’s finger, trying to push it back out. For a moment the finger withdrew and Tiuri thought it might have worked, but before he could even wonder what the king would have to say about that, the finger forced its way back in, even deeper than before. The king dragged his finger back and forth, back and forth, until Tiuri grew used to it.

“A second one, now,” the king warned.

The second finger did hurt a little. The king had the slender, elegant hands of a chess master, and his fingers were not very thick, but two of them together were wider and harder than anything Tiuri had felt down there before. His rim stretched uncomfortably, a dull ache that got worse as the king twisted his fingers around inside him. But then he pressed against something that made Tiuri forget about the pain.

Tiuri had touched himself before. He tried not to do it very often, and anyway a squire’s busy schedule didn’t leave much time for it. Once he became a knight he’d felt himself too grown-up to waste his time on such boyish pursuits and largely abstained. But what he felt moving through him now was a deeper, slower arousal than anything he’d experienced with his hand upon his prick. It was like the difference between a wide river and a quickly flowing brook: the second might sing out more loudly as it skipped over the stones, but the first had a current that could sweep people off their feet. The intensity of the feeling left him weak, and if Tiuri hadn’t been flat on his back already he might have fallen.

He bit his lip and twisted his hips against the king’s hand, trying to make the king's fingers press against that particular spot inside him once more, but just as his fingertips brushed it the king withdrew. Tiuri made a soft sound of protest, and then realized what he was doing and blushed, utterly mortified. Was he really complaining because the king had taken his fingers _out_ of his body?

“You are ready now, I think,” the king said. “And if you are not it does not matter.”

The king ran his oiled fingers up and down his prick, which had stiffened to a red scepter. It was bigger than two fingers, much too big to fit inside him, Tiuri thought. But he was sure that if he said this the king would only laugh at him again, and then he would put it in anyway. If only there was something he could say to stop this! But he knew pleas for mercy would do him no good. The King of Eviellan was a man who took whatever he wanted, and right now what he wanted was Tiuri.

The king lined up his prick and began to push against Tiuri’s hole. There was a momentary pressure, and then the head forced its way inside. Tiuri felt a sharp bright pain, nothing like the dull stretch from the king’s fingers, and he could not help crying out. He knew he was honor-bound to submit; he’d staked his life and the king had won it, and he had every right to use Tiuri in this way. But the pain was more than he could bear. Despite himself Tiuri tried to pull away, but the king seized his hip and his upraised leg and pushed himself inexorably in, burrowing deeper inside Tiuri with short, forceful thrusts until it felt like he had pierced him to the heart.

A pitiful whimper rose in Tiuri’s throat. He pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle it, but he knew the king could hear it all the same, and see the tears welling in the corners of his eyes. It was not the worst pain he had ever felt – the wound in his arm had been much worse – but the dagger that made it had promptly gone back out, whereas the king’s prick went in and in and in. He could feel his insides clenching around it, clutching it in a tight embrace, rearranging themselves to suit the king’s pleasure. His prick felt impossibly large, as if Tiuri’s whole body was just a sleeve to wrap it in. 

The king released his hip and was still for a moment, letting Tiuri feel the enormity of what was inside him. Gently, he reached down and brushed Tiuri’s sweat-damp hair back from his forehead, and this tenderness was almost worse than his cruelty, because for a moment his face blurred into that of Prince Iridian. The pain was making Tiuri lightheaded. He did not know what to think. He wanted the king to pull out more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, but at the same time his prick was rubbing up against that place that made Tiuri’s own prick rise and swell, and a treacherous part of him thought, _If he could only press a little harder…_

As if he could read Tiuri’s mind, the king started to pull out. For a moment Tiuri felt relief, but then the king thrust forward and buried himself inside him again, even deeper than before. He seized Tiuri’s hip again and slammed him against the bed, dragging his prick back and forth through Tiuri’s insides as if he was churning butter. To his shame Tiuri found himself straining against the king’s merciless grip, not to escape but to meet him. He was no longer sure whether the cries he was desperately struggling to hold back were of pain or of pleasure. He clutched his hand over his mouth so hard his teeth left dents in his palm, and it was not just to keep himself quiet but because he knew that if he let go for an instant he would reach for his own prick.

His predicament had not escaped the keen eyes of the King of Eviellan. The king smiled and released Tiuri’s thigh to wrap a hand gently around his prick. Slick with oil and Tiuri’s sweat, the loose circle of his fingers slid up and down without ever giving Tiuri enough friction to find his release. This king stroked Tiuri's prick in time with his own thrusts, pounding against that spot inside him until Tiuri was writhing beneath him in abject misery, utterly consumed by his need to spend.

“Please,” Tiuri begged through his fingers. He no longer cared that he was pleading with a murderer, with the villain who had killed Sir Edwinem and Ardanwen and the other knights in Sir Ristridin’s party, all for the sake of his insatiable ambition. At the moment his own insatiable need felt more important than friendship or honor or the fate of kingdoms.

“You had only to ask,” said the King of Eviellan, and closed his fist on Tiuri’s prick.

Tiuri cried out and came so hard that showers of sparks flew before his eyes and his seed spattered across his chest. Nothing in his haphazard pursuit of the solitary vice could have prepared him for this. The king milked him dry, and then returned his hand to Tiuri’s thigh and began plowing into him with renewed vigor. It was much more painful now that Tiuri was no longer distracted by his own need, but he was too wrung out to offer any resistance.

Eventually the king’s rhythm grew less steady, and at last he made a few final thrusts and pulled out with a quiet moan. His prick was soft and limp now, and there was a dampness between Tiuri’s thighs to accompany the streak of white slime on his chest and stomach that testified to his own shameful release.

How could he have been so weak? It was one thing to allow the king to bed him; he’d had no choice, not if he wanted to keep the Fool safe and survive long enough to warn King Unauwen and Prince Iridian about the army hiding in the forest. But to take pleasure in it as he had, to beg the King of Eviellan to lay his hands on him – no one had forced Tiuri to do that. He felt sick, like he’d eaten spoiled meat, but there was no way to throw up a bad conscience.

The King of Eviellan rolled off him and lay on his side, propping himself up on his elbow, and studied Tiuri with his unfathomable dark eyes.

“Well, well. You have hidden talents, Sir Tiuri. Perhaps you were right after all, and you are more suited to be my leman than my knight.”

Tiuri had said nothing of the sort, but he did not have the strength to argue. He felt as though he had been turned inside out. From the moment the king brought him to the Tarnburg he had done his best to set Tiuri off balance, but this game in which he played at being Tiuri’s lover was so much worse than any of the games he had played before. If Tiuri’s will was so easily broken by the king’s prick, how could he be sure that the king’s seductive speeches would not eventually win him over to his side?

The king got up to snuff the candles and then climbed back into bed beside Tiuri, pulling the blankets over him and tucking him in with mocking solicitude. He was soon fast asleep, blithely confident that Tiuri’s sense of honor would prevent him from doing any harm to the enemy who lay insensible and helpless by his side, or from slipping away in the night. 

It was a confidence that Tiuri no longer had in himself.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to reassure readers unfamiliar with the books that no horses were harmed in the making of this fic. Ardanwen is fine; Viridian has just been lying about him to mess with Tiuri's head.


End file.
